


that girl is a problem

by songandsilence



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Unlamplike Feelings Week, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:05:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songandsilence/pseuds/songandsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Not running from the law, are you?” he asks, sly and wondering why he’s wasting time here instead of getting on the plane home. </p><p>Her eyes are sharp, bright as she shoots him a glance. “Who, me? Do I look like trouble?”</p><p>“Oh, definitely,” he answers without hesitation.</p><p>+</p><p>written for unlamplike feelings week over on tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	that girl is a problem

They meet for the first time in Prague, on a balcony overlooking the river. It’s late winter, almost spring, and the air is thick with fog and glittering the lights of buildings across the river they can’t quite see. Danny straightens his bowtie and wishes, not for the first time, that he was at home in front of the TV with a beer. But he’s here, and he’s got a job to do.

Sliding through the crowd, every person dressed within an inch of their lives, he skirts the dance floor and heads for the massive bay windows. They are ringed with fairy lights, twined through bushes in huge pots that look like they’re made of gold. _Bushes,_ he scoffs. _Inside?_

He puts his hands in his pockets, feels the thumb drive with all of Marek’s files on it. It has been a pretty slick move, he thinks to himself. Just a little of the old Castellano charm, a smirk and a wink at a pretty woman before slipping through a slide door. Easy. Now he had his intel and he was supposed to be through the front doors of the hotel, getting his exquisite ride from valet parking and breezing out of the city to the private jet that is waiting for him at an air strip.

But he finds himself sidling through the huge open doors and out onto the balcony, taking in the view of the foggy river. The music throbs behind him, and he feels it deep in his chest. It’s soothing, the anonymity. At least for the moment.

“Hey there,” a voice says, and he turns to see her striding towards him.

She’s gorgeous, glitzy, coy. Wrapped in deep purple silk, she walks like she knows exactly how much the diamonds at her throat and ears are worth. Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, thick ringlets that he thinks he wouldn’t mind seeing spread out across some pale sheets.

 _Jesus Christ,_ he thinks to himself. Get your shit together, Castellano.

“Hi,” he says aloud, hoping he sounds pleasantly, if unexpectedly, surprised. “Do I know you?” Obviously he doesn’t, but he wants to see how she responds.

She shrugs, makes a little twitch with her mouth. “No, not yet. I’m Sasha.”

“Sasha, huh? I’m Michael.” They shake hands. Hers is surprisingly firm, almost a little painful. “What brings you to Prague?”

Looking out over the foggy river and giving him a good long view of her profile, she replies, “I live here. Ex-pat. It’s the trendy thing to do nowadays, I guess.”

“Not running from the law, are you?” he asks, sly and wondering why he’s wasting time here instead of getting on the plane home.

Her eyes are sharp, bright as she shoots him a glance. “Who, me? Do I look like trouble?”

“Oh, definitely,” he answers without hesitation, hands slipping back inside of his pockets to feel the reassuring shape of the thumb drive there. She throws her head back in a laugh, the diamonds at her throat winking in the fairy lights.

She’s still smiling as she says, “Speak for yourself, dude. Look at you, all debonair in your tux. Who are you, James Bond?” There is absolutely no edge to the way she says it, just eyes crinkling a little at the corners and one hand on her hip.

“Nah,” Danny scoffs, leaning against the wide stone railing, back to the river. “Queen and country aren’t really my thing. I’m more of a John Wayne kind of a guy.”

This makes her eyes spark, and she hums thoughtfully. “A cowboy. I see.” Before he can respond she steps up close to him, so close he can smell her warm, almondy perfume, and leans in to whisper into his ear. “I do have a serious weakness for the whole lone gunslinger thing.”

 _What am I doing?_ he asks himself, trying to remember how to swallow. She smiles against his cheek and slowly, so slowly, leans back to face him. “But, unfortunately, I have to go.”

This startles him so much he has to blink a couple times and clear his throat before he can say anything. “Go? Now?”

She just smiles, tips an imaginary cowboy hat. “See ya, stranger.” Then she’s gone, sashaying back through the wide doors and getting lost in the crowd.

Bemused, he watches her go with a half smile on his face. Then he puts his hands in his pockets. 

They’re empty.

“Well, shit,” he says, impressed despite himself and staring in the direction she disappeared.

 

* * *

 

He tries running after her. That’s valuable intel, after all. He worked hard to get it.

She’s long gone.

 

* * *

 

It’s seven months before they run into each other again, and this time he sees her first. They’re in a shady bar in São Paulo and he’s supposed to be meeting a contact when he sees her sitting at the bar. There’s no way it can be the same girl, he thinks, but it is. She’s not wearing a ball gown anymore, just jeans and a button down shirt, but he’d recognize her anywhere.

When he walks up to her, he can’t for the life of him think of anything to say at all, and so just ends up saying, “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hi,” she says, eyes lighting up with pleasant surprise. It shakes him, how much he likes it. “Wow, of all the places.”

He smirks. “I’m going to guess you’re name isn’t Sasha.”

A laugh bursts from her lips, loud and bright. “I thought it would make me sound exotic. Hey, don’t judge me – your name most definitely isn’t Michael. What a _super boring_ cover name, by the way.”

Okay, apparently they’re not pretending they just normal people anymore. That’s fine. He can play that game. Shrugging, he replies, “It’s inconspicuous. Less memorable than _Sasha_.”

“You’re damn right it is,” she shoots back, jerking her chin up as she does so. Danny can’t help but rise to the challenge, straightening a little so that he’s more than a couple of inches taller than her. He sees her notice, and she sets down her glass and gives him her full attention.

“You stole my intel in Prague.” The gleam is back in her eye. “My bosses weren’t too happy about that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should have spent some more time training you not to get distracted by every girl in a pretty dress,” she teases him, but there’s a bite of truth to it.

Trying to pass it off with a little self-deprecation, he shrugs. “It was a very pretty dress.”

Her gaze sharpens. “Uh huh. It was the _dress_ that distracted you.”

Before he can respond, his phone buzzes. His contact is here. In an instant, her eyes take in the motion and she’s trying to casually glance around the packed bar to see who he’s meeting. Letting out a breath, he leans forward on the bar and invades her space a little. “So, who do you work for?”

The close proximity unnerves her a little, he can see, and he files that away. “Like I would tell you.”

He stands, slides his phone back in his pocket and keeps his hands there, studying her. “I’m guessing you’re an independent contractor. You’ve got too much attitude for a government job.”

For a moment her face goes blank, but she recovers quickly. “The hours are killer but the medical is spectacular,” she jokes, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “You don’t look like the desk job type, buddy. Is that why you’re CIA?” This flat out shocks him. How did she figure that out? “Working for the good guys while still getting your adrenaline fix? I bet you were a boy scout.”

She says the last bit with a hungry grin that forces him to swallow before he can respond.

 _Go and meet your contact and do your job,_ he tells himself, but for some reason he finds himself saying, “My name’s Danny.”

She blinks, but a small, pleased little smile finds its way onto her face. “Mindy.”

“Nice to meet you, Mindy,” he says before disappearing into the crowd.

_Smooth, Castellano._

He hopes.

 

* * *

 

The next time they meet, there’s a misunderstanding involving a security pass and a consulate that devolves into a shoot out in a parking garage in lower Manhattan.

“Are they _shooting_ at us?!” Mindy shrieks, ducking behind the car. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Danny returns fire over the hood of the car, then crouches back down beside her. “What, you’ve never been shot at before? I find that hard to believe.” Suddenly a horrifying thought enters his mind. “You do have a gun, right?”

She shoots him a flat look as bullets fly over their heads. “Of course I have a gun, Danny.” That’s when she pulls this absolutely tiny thing out of her purse – oh, god, is it pink?

Now it’s his turn to say, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“It shoots just fine,” she tells him smoothly, and in one swift movement lays an arm up and over the hood, returns fire. Her dress rides up her thigh, and he sees she’s wearing stockings that clip into some sort of suspender-y thing. He swallows.

 _Come on, Castellano,_ he berates himself, and joins her in shooting at some bad guys.

“This is why,” Mindy yells between shots, “you should have just given me the key card and let me do my fucking job.”

“ _Your_ job? This is _my_ job, Mindy. I swear to god, if you screw up another one of my –“

There is an intense volley aimed at their heads, and they quickly hit the ground behind the car. Danny is just about to suggest that they get their asses elsewhere, but Mindy keeps going. “You’re so full of shit, Danny. You think it’s my fault you were so easily distracted by my charm and unbelievable sex appeal?”

He glances up at her, eyebrows sneaking up, smirk dragging up one corner of his mouth. “Sex appeal, huh?”

He doesn’t mention that he can still see the lacey top edge of her stockings, or that her hair is a tousled mess around her shoulders and there’s a bit of mascara smudged across her cheek.

She’s too busy glaring at him to notice the stare. “I have unbelievable sex appeal, okay, Danny? Jesus. Can we get out of here, please?”

“I was just about to say the same thing myself.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, where are we going?” she yells as they sprint down the street and skid around the corner – she nearly topples in her ridiculous heels but seems to be keeping pace with him pretty well.

“I, uh, I don’t know.”

They pause, and it’s _really stupid_ because they’re being chased and could pretty much be killed at any moment. Adrenaline is pounding through Danny’s veins like a hurricane, and when he looks at her he sees a strange sort of seriousness in her eyes.

He takes another step. “You coming?”

She follows.

 

* * *

 

The adrenaline keeps up all the way to the CIA safe house, and he’s pulling her through the door and she’s pushing him up against the wall before he can even think that maybe he shouldn’t be doing this.

“Shit,” she mutters against his mouth. Her lips are ridiculously demanding, and (not for the first time) he wonders if he’s in over his head. Is pretty sure he is. Decides he doesn’t care.

He wants to touch every inch of her, he thinks as he runs his tongue up her neck and sucks just beneath her jaw. She’s not that patient, however. Hands already down his pants, she has him groaning, “Fuck,” her shoulder within a few seconds. There is a breathy laugh against his ear and he knows he has to turn the tables.

Spinning so she’s the one up against the wall – she gives a little shriek, almost topples on her insanely high heels – and his hands are racing up her stockings and between her legs.

“Oh, _God_ ,” she moaned, head slamming back against the wall. Smiling, Danny can’t help but feel a little smug. He keeps his mouth on her jaw, her neck, one hand anchoring her hip and the other rough on her clit. No surprise – she’s loud. A steady stream of gasps, moans and obscenities leave her mouth as he moves the hand on her hip to slip a finger inside of her. The noise that leaves her just then is truly spectacular, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to remember it for the rest of his life. An instant after that, with his thumb pressing down on her clit just as his fingers twist up inside of her, she comes. It’s gorgeous as fuck – her back arched off the wall, his name ripped from her mouth. He almost comes just watching her, but manages to hold himself in check. This isn’t the end of the night.

It’s the adrenaline, he knows. That's why he feels like he's losing his mind. But as they stare at each other, just an inch of air between them, he thinks it might just be _her_.

“Shit,” she says again, amazement seeping into her voice.

 

* * *

 

Mindy stares at the ceiling, wrapped in a lumpy white comforter on the mattress on the floor they almost broke not too long ago. “What are we doing?”

His eyes slide from her to the door. “We should probably do our job. We still need to get into that consulate.”

She hits him lightly in the stomach. He tries to refrain from laughing. “No, I mean, what are the two of us doing with each other? This could get messy.”

Looking back at her, he sighs. “Yeah. I know.”

With wide, earnest eyes, she shrugs. “What do we do?”

In a fit of bravery, he takes her hand on top of the comforter. “We go get that key card, get into the consulate, and then…then we figure it out from there.”

“Great. Thanks. I’m so glad we had this conversation,” she replies flatly, and then he really can’t help but laugh.

“Have a little faith, Mindy.”

 

* * *

 

Breathing hard, they skid around a corner in the rain and even though there’s barely any breath left in their lungs Mindy is _somehow_ still complaining about how her dress is soaked through and how hard it is to run on wet cobblestone streets in heels.

They’re alive and, frankly, he’s shocked.

Finally coming to a stop, Danny does a quick sweep of the street and doesn’t see anybody coming after them. “I think we’re clear,” he says, hands on his hips. “Though we shouldn’t stay here for long. I’ll call it in and get us picked up.”

Mindy looks up from ringing the water out of her long hair. “Uh, I don’t work for the CIA, buddy. What do you think they’re going to do to me when they pick me up? Toss me in Guantanamo? Oh God, Danny. I wouldn’t do well in Guantanamo. They definitely wouldn’t let me take my hair curler and that’s the only household item I have that can easily turn into at least three shivs. I need it.”

She is _so strange_ , he thinks. There is no earthly reason he should be as into her as he is, but that’s life for you, he guesses. She’s still talking, but all he can do is stare at her in bemused awe. “Hey,” he says, and she stops mid-rant. “You wanna get a drink?”

This stops her short. Tilting her head to the side, she studies him for a second while one side of her mouth slides up in a smile. “Yeah, okay.”

 

* * *

 

Mindy hums contentedly as she slips onto the couch beside him. “This is nice. I mean, your place could use some redecorating, but the exposed brick is pretty.”

“It’s not _pretty_ ,” Danny counters after taking a sip of his beer. “It’s manly and industrial.”

The laugh that bubbles out of her mouth makes him smile. He can’t help it. “Sure, Danny. Never mind that it’s an aesthetic touch you paid extra for when you chose your apartment in SoHo.”

“Shut up,” he tells her good naturedly, and she whacks him in the stomach but lets him slide his arm around her shoulders as they settle together on the couch.

“Don’t be a jerk.”

He glances at her, and she’s looking at him with an arched eyebrow, clearly waiting for his rebuttal. But looking at the curl of her lips and the biting, playful gleam in her eye, all he can come up with is, “I’m glad you’re here.” _I think I love you._

Slowly, her smile shifts from something teasing to something softer. Something that makes his chest feel insanely warm. Settling closer to him, she says, “You know what? That earns you something. You can pick which city of Real Housewives we watch tonight.”

He sighs, running his fingers over her shoulder as he looks toward the TV screen. “Miami.”

“Yes,” she quietly cheers, keeping her fist-pumping to a minimum.

He’s grateful for that.

**Author's Note:**

> Please pardon this hastily written fic - it was just SO MUCH FUN.


End file.
